Google is now telling users its apps are out of date. No updates are available
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They got badly surprised by their own security warning.
They are lying about the situation while knowing we know they are lying.
No message control / (social) media control. Does Google even have a public relations teams? A press officer? Is anyone managing all of this? Hello? Is somebody home?
6 + 2 months without progress from a company with infinite money -what is going on at Google? Fits right in with what happened to Terraria.
Now there is really no support from Google for their products.
But that's the nefarious and the hidden bit, and the biggest complaint is that there is no "motive", because people aren't involved at any stage. Every day bots and algorithms tend to YouTube's ToS violations and don't give enough feedback that explains to a human why they did what they don't, don't seem to be reviewed by a human anywhere in the process, and there seems to exist no real human oversight for appeals or post-mortem reviews. It's all very opaque to people, so yes it is hidden and seems nefarious. It especially seems nefarious that there is no real "motive" just machines eating each other endlessly with seemingly no human oversight. (And then that the YouTube account takedown also takes down most of the communications tools such as GMail along with it only furthers the nefarious and "post-mortem" feelings of such an "every day kind of ban".)
We know from centuries of human behavior that rules systems and governments syncretize until the average person just trusts them, assumes their outputs are "fair" when they can't see well enough inside the black box. I am under the impression that such a thing has happened at Google. Too much belief in the "impartiality of algorithms" (which has never been true) blinds a group to avoid questioning what the machines have already done because the machines wouldn't have done it if they didn't have a "good reason". Of course we all know that it is unlikely any of those machines actually reason at all ("have motive"), and instead reflect the biases of their programming, the lack of general oversight in their outliers and false positives/false negatives, the questions of ethics that would be asked of a human judge (and jury), etc.
I assume, because Google has given me no evidence to assume otherwise, if people examined and confirmed the result, they did so with a rubber stamp and presumption the machine is right unless proven otherwise. That's the nefarious thing: there's no motive here. The people aren't given motive to question the machine's decisions, because the machine's decisions are "fair", and the machines have no motive of their own to suggest the sorts of "fair" that include ethics and judicial process, just a bunch of dice rolled that landed with enough snake eyes to "convict". (It's a classic sci-fi dystopian tale, that Google has made an unfortunate part of so many lives.)
To return to the original post that started this conversation subthread:
> I don't believe no one has noticed at Google yet. There has to be something else at this point.
I think that's true, it's just that those of us on the outside will never find out the real reason because the decisionmakers within Google are deciding to stay silent about this for whatever reason.
Even if it goes to the highest levels in the company, they aren't playing the game "prove why the system was wrong", they are are playing the game "prove why the millions of dollars we poured into this system were right". Especially if they are at fairly high levels of the company removed from the day to day maintenance of the system, they have more personally invested in assuming the system works right, in believing the system to be an unbiased and "fair" black box (because their personal reputations get tied to the company's reputations get tied to the system's reputation).
I think the "something else" is just general mistrust in broken "guilty until proven innocent" systems. I believe people have noticed, but the system still wins because the system is usually "right". It's the "benign" AI bureaucracy "utopia" Google (and a lot of Silicon Valley) keeps saying they all want and keeps trying to build doing exactly what it was built to do, absolve humans of human decisions and blame it on the "fair" black box. But maybe I'm just a huge cynic about human nature.
Granted, feels more like a tech-demo than an actual product.
Great reason to leave Google.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_17_...
For example, in iOS Safari the desktop version of youtube.com has a completely broken picture-in-picture feature on the video element.
But if you open exactly the same page in iOS Brave (just a skin over the same engine because Apple doesn't allow competing browser engines) you suddenly get working picture-in-picture playback.
The funny thing is: A website doesn't have to do anything special to support PIP (introduced in iOS 14). Every video element automatically received that button. Google had to go out of their way to break this feature in Safari. (I assume they don't want to allow it because it competes with YouTube Premium, which specifically advertises "background play" as one of the paid features).
disclaimer: ex-googler in ads.
Can you imagine being an iOS developer working on Gmail right now, having shipped literally nothing this year? I'd be requesting an internal transfer (and/or polishing my resume).
"This year" as in 6 weeks? Is that a lot in Google or iOS-land?
After seeing that, one can not help but to assume that 1.) the lack of updates are related to the privacy label deadline and 2.) that most of its apps are in need of bug fixes and aren’t receiving those updates.
Whilst interesting, that graph does need each app split out a bit more clearly-while it’s clear that none of them have updated since the cutoff, it would be best to be able to see each apps release cadence beforehand.
So a 2 month break is just skipping a release (or two) for most apps which isn't a huge break in bugfixes.
In the same period during which they stopped updating the iOS version of Google search, they updated the Android version 27 times.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02/google-flags-its-ios...
For the thing that the article is about; i.e. the out of date warning, isn't that what Google is doing to all apps that embed a Google login now?
> Can you imagine being an iOS developer working on Gmail right now, having shipped literally nothing this year?
I'm sure they're shipping internal releases to 100,000 of their coworkers, so are probably getting feedback on new features while waiting for releases to the public to become unblocked. In the meantime, they're probably collecting more than $300,000 a year in total comp, so probably not super incentivized to quit. Google is kind of like other big companies now, I imagine -- don't rock the boat too much, do what your manager says -- with the upside that if you play your cards right you can accumulate a large chunk of savings that earns meaningful recurring income and a million dollar house you own outright before you're 40. Not for everyone, but I imagine the iOS Gmail team is not super incentivized to start burning down the corporate headquarters because they're restless about the release cycle.
This is a bit funny because from the user's perspective it's fantastic! To put it mildly, we are not great fans of Gmail upgrades, especially big ones.
Having worked at Google, it's very common that your work takes more than 6 weeks to reach users even when you're on the full release cadence (which is maybe a release monthly for most apps, and sometimes a cherrypick bugfix release in addition). Projects taking more than 6 months from engineering complete to being live wasn't even that exceptional.
I really think google is trying to be more good than bad in these matters, knowing how the sausage is made. but again, that's my probably biased view.
It's been 8 months, 2 since their homework was due. The choices are (1) they are incapable and incompetent or (2) this is a fake manufactured crisis. There isn't even any particular app change required - you literally just fill out a sheet and add another prompt.
disclaimer: deep cynic over all google's actions.
disclaimer: ex-googler not in ads
Somebody broke something. It's kinda funny for us and embarrassing for Google, but its not a conspiracy
Users are always signed into Facebook but they still have to disclose for instance.
notatoad said no, it's unrelated to IDFA.
You seem to agree with notatoad, saying IDFA is unrelated, other factors are what matter.
Privacy label requirements that some users may look at are one thing, but IDFA access specifically pops up a dialog that can be denied, like location access so it is way more endangered.
I don't think so, Google needs to be on iPhones much more than Apple needs Google to be on iPhones. Gmail works with Mail and I don't think many people are going to switch to Android just to use a native Gmail app.
Is it impossible to do any kind of advertising without the IDFA? Or is this simply a matter of them only being able to make a smaller yet still gigantic pile of money?
Also, it allows Google to track that you've seen an ad and later bought something from the advertiser's website, so the advertiser knows what they get in return for their ad spend.
"Sharing a list of emails, advertising IDs, or other IDs with a third-party advertising network that uses that information to retarget those users in other developers’ apps or to find similar users."
It's 2021, servers are a fraction of the pice and vastly easier to deploy than they were in '08 when Apple needed google for these apps.
I'm not convinced we use the G-suite of products for any particularly good reason other than they have a G and they are free. For the margins and scale of ios Apple could easily provide equivalent apps in-house if customers need them to be free or let the market set the price for non-ad supported versions.
Since switching I've only used gmail and maps/waze from g-suite. I'm 90% certain I can replace maps/waze in the near future.
Pretty sure that's just crappy google quality. My 2 year old Samsung is going strong. It became marginally faster with the latest update.
Look, it might very well be a shitty phone. Just saying that after 4 years I'd cut any phone a break. Especially since phones got impractically thin, batteries have really struggled to work the way they do when they are new after a year or two.
I still miss the hardware keyboard.
Phone batteries generally lose 20% of capacity every ~500 cycles. So lumost may well have a battery with only 1/2 the original capacity or less. [1]
[1] This is for iPhone, but I imagine it's similar for all devices. https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT208387
This is about the requirement to disclose how much data you are collecting and what you are doing with it that rolled out as "Privacy Nutrition Labels" in iOS 14.3 a couple of months ago.
>Apple announced Privacy Nutrition Labels at WWDC 2020. Under the scheme, developers selling apps on the App Store must explain the privacy practices of each one they sell. That means detailed information concerning what data they collect, why, and what they do with it must be provided to users in the form of what looks like a food nutrition label.
Apple has asked developers to provide this information with their app since Dec. 8; while apps already available in the store don’t have to have it, as developers roll out updates, they’ll be expected to include where data is being used and in what category (including financial and personal data).
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3600998/apples-privacy...
If you update your app, you must disclose the privacy information to users.
Google's solution to the problem has been to refuse to update their apps, and they have waited so long that they have triggered their own automated security warning.
What about openstreetmap?
Without these, Google only gets revenue from search on iOS. That itself is diminished because they won’t be able to later show you ads based on your search. That is why Google pushes you to sign in.
An additional problem is that search revenue from iOS devices is greater than on Android (as of a few years ago). So this, and that consumers spend most of their time on mobile, is a huge problem for Google. This is a LOT of their revenue.
Like you said, this looks like a silent war. Google can’t complain about monopoly power given that they control Android. That’s why this war is silent.
Also, this isn’t just about Google. You have Facebook, Snap, etc...
When users access many types of paid subscription accounts, they are asked to confirm the login in a Google app on their mobile device. It's dangerous if vulnerabilities aren't being fixed and their servers still trust these apps to authenticate.
On another note, over the past year a few people have told me their new email addresses, then they continued using Gmail out of inertia. A significant enough problem with their aging apps could be the event that gets users to follow through and make a transition away from using Google services as a default.
Standard model costs $799.
- Sent from my iPhone SE (1st generation)
Except you are out of luck when Apple decides to stop updates.
> As long as there's no major security issues and you don't feel a pressing need for hardware or software improvements not available on older models, why upgrade at all?
There are always major security issues. Look at how often they appear in browsers.
For me, these are professional tools, and reliability therefore outweighs just about everything else in my consideration of what to use. Tools that don't reliably help me complete the task at hand are the wrong tools, no matter what their other virtues, and nothing else I've tried has been more reliable in that sense than Apple hardware - granted, I haven't had as good a time with the Touch Bar-era laptops, but even they have still been head and shoulders over any past or present Windows laptop I've tried, and I'm not even going to talk about my experience with Linux on laptops because I have enough problems today without attracting a crowd of angry partisans. And from what I hear about the M1 laptops, Apple seem to have gotten their act together, in any case.
Outside work, I still need the appliances I use in daily life to be reliable. Apple's phones aren't up to the standard I prefer, but they come closer to that than anything else I've tried, so they're what I prefer in that regard too. I would like it if they seemed likely to ever again make a phone that's comfortably sized for my hands, but nobody else does either, so that's life, I guess. It's a lot of why I learned how to repair my SEs and where to get parts for them. When it's no longer tenable for whatever reason to keep using them, I'll figure out what to do next. Probably that will be a newer iPhone, because I don't think it's likely anyone else will come along to compete on the combination of compatibility, reliability, and active concern for privacy that matters most to me. I think it would be great if someone did, though.
In any case, as I think we've both said in this conversation, there are tradeoffs, and these are mine. I generally assume that other people who talk here about using an iPhone have made that decision after a process of consideration not wholly dissimilar to mine, and that anyone regularly on Hacker News probably has a good sense of alternatives given how they're regularly discussed here.
Can't argue here, Apple is indeed the only choice in such case.
> and I'm not even going to talk about my experience with Linux on laptops because I have enough problems today without attracting a crowd of angry partisans.
I bet you did not use laptops designed for Linux and instead installed it on some Lenovo. I've been having solid experience with a laptop sold with preinstalled Linux. But Apple is still probably more solid.
> I don't think it's likely anyone else will come along to compete on the combination of compatibility, reliability, and active concern for privacy that matters most to me. I think it would be great if someone did, though.
I can't say that it's already reliable, but I have big hopes for the next couple of years: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5.
Wildlife photography matters to me enough that I'd switch careers if I thought I could make it pay, which is sadly next to impossible. None of the equipment that backpack is built for does me any good if I leave it at home, and some of the best wildlife shots I've ever gotten have been on breaks at work. So a laptop has to be able to ride along, and I've never found anything but a Mac that can do so and still have a good enough spec for the work I do.
On the other hand, I expect to be taking on full-remote jobs for the foreseeable future, between my own preferences and the effect of the pandemic on the industry. So maybe I can think about going back to a satchel for carrying work equipment on the likely infrequent occasions when I need to be onsite somewhere, and that would let me relax the "thin and sturdy" requirement that's partly kept me on Macs for a while now.
I'll freely admit, there's a lot not to like about the MacOS UI. It would be nice to have a daily driver running KDE again, and not have Emacs be a second-class citizen in the windowing system.
Also the labels are not so much about what data is sent but about what the companies do with the data. Example: Do they just use your position once to show you relevant search results, or do they create a location history of you? Do they sell that history? Do they combine it with other data about you? There is no way to know.
Of course you can, just configure your phone to use a MITM proxy (e.g. burp). This won’t work for apps that use certificate pinning but most apps don’t.
Of course, you still don’t know what data they really store and/or sell.
I can see that as an issue.
[0] - https://twitter.com/tomwarren/status/1339174301564604418 [1] - https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1347165127036977153
Most companies didn't bother doing anything about it until 2018, and even today a lot of non-EU companies restrict or block access to EU customers, saying it's too hard to only use personal data for purposes they have been given permission for.
As HN's guidelines say, always assume the best intensions.
It's just as likely they just haven't shipped the new versions of the apps yet for many other technical reasons. Given the labels are a requirement and Google hasn't announced a lawsuit, there's no reason to believe they have any intention to not add them.
I think that refers to other posters comments. Taking potshots at faceless corporations is OK.
This is "just" the first big thing to break as a result.
(This is a likely comment if this was to go on for 6 months).
Given I have an ipad and don't see these messages about these apps, eg gmail, I'm not sure what to make of this article.
Is this a region based thing?
Automated expiry notice because they (rightly) deliberately release often?
Ha, I actually followed that link, curious what new features Apple Maps has. The only update listed there is this:
> Apple Maps update to add Google Maps and Waze-like incident reporting
Ok then.
And when I buy them I ensure they are not tied to automated faceless recovery mechanisms.
I use google photos, and I will have to pay for it starting june, but I keep offline backups.
Of course, I pay for non-critical from big tech like Spotify which I don't care if I suddenly lose my account tomorrow.
So this is simply hiding the embarrassing symptom.
I wonder will the end up creating a separate Gsuite Gmail app?
So, statements in the screenshot like "the version you are using doesn't include the latest security features” are lies, uh ?
The truth is that the status quo of Google being a privacy-violating unregulated monopoly is incredibly profitable, so they're going to drag out changing that to the last possible moment.
Especially, as getting update right is really critical. People give big tech no credit for trying to be honest (and for often good reason - lots of their decision are shady/have more details that are omitted), but they won’t intentionally straight out lie about how they use your data - that’s a legal suicide. Huge amount of due diligence is needed when scope of what’s allowed is changing.
Google pushed and update, the sever tests if you have the required update, if not directs you to the app store. Apple haven't made the update available in the store.
We see it all the time in games. It sucks. You have to go play something else for a while.
> https://twitter.com/Thomasbcn/status/1356645088697454596/pho...